Once in a while, you read an article that is well thought out, well written and thought provoking.

The following link maps strategies, suggestions to bring UA back to health.
While it applies mainly to the USA, I could not help but make parallels with the AC plan to change itself.

The topics of fleet rationalization, yield management are discussed and again I could not help thinking about what we are debating about the future of Air Canada.

Here is the link and read it in the spirit of a focus issue discussion.

http://www.airliners.net/articles/read.main?id=23

[This message has been edited by airbus320 (edited 01-08-2003).]

The article seems overly "simplistic" to me. The concept might be a good one, but he glosses over a number of issues, and ignores others altogether.

He does address the creation of an over-supply driving down prices if an airline (or several) all started selling planes at the same time. But even if that wasn't an issue, selling/retiring planes of a certain model would result in an absolute overall reduction in carrying capacity.

Some reduction might be a good thing, but it's not like all aircraft are flying half full, so you can immediately unload half your fleet. Some of that "retired capacity" will need to be replace with other planes, and you can be sure that the new planes purchased to streamline the fleet will cost more than the out of favour aircraft being retired.

Each airline that might embark on such a path will figure out which are the best planes and models to keep. Chances are most airlines will come to similar conclusions. (That may be mitigated by current investment in a particular type, and support infrastructure for that type.)

But it's likely that everyone will be retiring F100s, and looking to A319s to replace them. That will increase the supply and lower the received price for the F100s, and increase the demand and price for the desired A319s.

nteresting read. UA is a great case study "how not to build your fleet". Spend a few hours at ORD and I am sure you can see almost every type of plane built in the last 20 years there in UA colours. I know that is more than a bit of exaggeration but boy do they cover the spectrum. I once read an article when that when BWIA leased two A321's they purchased 5 mill US worth of spare parts. If that is even halfway accurate imagine how much money UA has tied up in spare parts.

AC has done a much better job of rationalizing their fleet as they have renewed it. The A319, A329 & A321's use a high percentage (I once heard 80%) of the same parts and once the pilots are qualified on one they can fly any of them. Same holds true for the A330/A340's. Makes it much easier for scheduling. I keep hearing that they are looking to dumping the 747-4's but read on another thread they are bringing one back on line. Add the 767 and RJ50 (they will go to Jazz as soon as they can get the Pilots union to agree) and AC's fleet already has only 5 different aircraft.

AC has one of the more standardised fleets out there. Flying out of CDG often, I have to say that AF has probably the most diverse fleet of any major: A319,A320,A321,A330,A340, B737, B747, B767,B777, Embrarer RJ, some F100'S, Concorde

Fun for spotting though